How an inflight meal is made: Finnair Kitchen's Development Chef Sami Oksava on his work

From summer job to Finnair Kitchen

Sami grew up around food. His father was a head chef, and the family ate well, even if it was ordinary home cooking.

“It made an impression, and you learned to appreciate it. We travelled now and then when I was a child, and abroad there was always something interesting to taste,” Sami says.

Cooking felt like a natural path. After comprehensive school Sami trained as a chef and, while still young, got a summer job at Finnair Catering, as Finnair Kitchen was then known. He has worked with inflight food ever since.

“Aviation interested me as much as cooking. It's a fascinating environment to work in.”

What a Development Chef does

Put simply, Sami and his team design menus for Finnair flights. His focus is Business Class on both short-haul and long-haul routes. He also helps choose the Economy Class dishes for long-haul flights and the Business Class dishes for short-haul flights, which are made by a subcontractor, as well as the products sold on board short-haul flights. The crew meals prepared at Finnair Kitchen are partly his work too. Ideas are gathered, trends followed and seasons taken into account, as in any kitchen. Day to day, though, the work looks quite different from a restaurant chef's.

“A typical day is mostly spent at the computer: writing recipes, preparing instructions for production and sitting in meetings.”

A menu season begins with the Inflight Concepts and Categories team, where themes and highlights are agreed. The team then designs the dishes, and a product development week follows.

“The Head of Development joins me, along with a couple of chefs from production. During the week we prepare dozens of dishes and test flavours and combinations.”

The strongest dishes go forward to a menu presentation, where the next season's menu is decided.

Why food tastes different on a plane? 

In a pressurised cabin, your sense of taste works differently than on the ground.

“It's a bit like having a cold or a blocked nose. That's why the flavours need to be stronger,” Sami explains.

Salt still calls for care. Sami admits he tends to salt generously, but not everyone on board likes salty food, so he has to hold back.

The bigger difference from restaurant food lies in how the meal is made. An inflight meal is cooked, chilled quickly, plated cold and only reheated on board.

“There's a lot to consider: texture, flavour, how the ingredients hold up in contact with each other and how the dish looks after reheating.”

Doneness is one of the hardest things to get right. The food is cooked at Finnair Kitchen, and reheating easily pushes it past the point where it's dry and overcooked. Even so, it can't be left slightly underdone in the hope that the aircraft oven will finish the job, as that would be a quality risk. This has to be considered when choosing the ingredients. Sauce can't be added freely, even though it would keep the dish moist, because it may boil over. Every aircraft oven behaves slightly differently, and if turbulence interrupts the service, the meals sit waiting in the oven.

What doesn't survive the journey to 11 kilometres?

Crispness. Cold dishes are stored covered in a chiller, where they can turn soggy. Fried items soften after chilling and reheating under foil. Foams collapse or set too firm. Pickling drains the colour from many ingredients, and salad can't be dressed in advance because the oil wilts the leaves.

“The surprises in testing are usually that something doesn't work after all,” Sami says.

Meals are mostly prepared the day before: the evening shift makes the morning departures, and the day shift makes the evening ones. Several thousand meals leave Finnair Kitchen every day.

The feedback that matters

The most rewarding moments come when a menu succeeds: the dishes look good and the recipes are practical for the chefs in production too. What Sami values most, though, is feedback from passengers.

“Customer feedback and even social media posts are rewarding. I'd welcome more of it, about what worked and what we should develop.”

The hardest part is creating a menu that pleases as many people as possible.

A big pot of soup at home

After work, Sami cooks everyday food, preferably a large pot of soup or a stew with potatoes or rice, so there's no need to cook every day. In summer the grill and the pizza oven get plenty of use.

Among Finnair's destinations, he singles out Osaka.

“The food there was outstanding. Go for local dishes and local restaurants.”

For new ideas, Sami turns to trade fairs, social media, food trends and partners in the industry.

Advice for anyone dreaming of becoming a chef

“Being a chef is demanding and hard work, but it's interesting, and a restaurant can be a remarkable place to work. The training is useful even if you never do it for a living.”

And what does he hope you think when the tray is empty?

“That it was a well-balanced, tasty meal.”